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Central ND | Where do you readers all perfer you aircart on your air seeders, In front of your seeding tools or behind? Why or why not?I some of both and always wondered which is perfered. I even saw one with nh3 behind and air cart in front. Cant the carts take towing all that load? |
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Watford City, ND | We got a 5000HD Flexi-Coil with a tow-behind. Instead of opting for the all-moniters blackage option, we have a tow-behind and we can visibly check the system ourselves. Is it perfect? No. Maybe once or twice a year we have a blockage that may extend for a 100 feet or so. But I usually catch it. We too have NH3 behind the cart. Makes for quite a train when it comes to sharp turning at the end of the field.
Personally, I prefer the tow-behind. But again, I live in an area where compaction is never a problem. |
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SW KS | I hope you get many different answers on this, because I have yet to see a reason to have it in front (tow-between). That being said obviously I prefer it in the back (tow-behind).
1> Ease of filling. We fill with a semi and I can turn the drill and drive directly beside the cart with 61' drill attached.
2> Ease of watching drill. Can constantly keep eyes on drill vs. only seeing the front of cart. Really helpful when no tilling into corn stalks.
Some people will say that they do not like the "looks" of tracks in their field but if it has zero affect on stand then what does it matter. In the wheat I drilled a month ago, you would literally have to stop, get out and walk into field to find where the tracks are at. I have planted into the mud, pulled a 350 bu cart over the top and still had a perfect stand. You will need to set the drill up differently in the rows which the cart runs over, but from people I talked to they have to do the same thing on a tow between. There will be instances where you don't get a perfect stand once, but after planting in those conditions and paying attention to stand, then there is no excuse to ever have it again in the future.
As I found out this year. If you have to plant wheat over 3 inches deep to get to moisture, you need to plant it shallower in the cart tracks. Also muddy behind disc drill and muddy behind hoe drill, leads to completely different results upon emergence.
You may be wondering how I can talk about burying it 3-4 inches deep and being to muddy to run in the same year. Just remember I live in Kansas. Month of August south end of farm had 1" while north end of farm had over 18". |
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ND | I've used both and don't think it really makes too much of a difference. We currently have a Concord drill with a tow-between tank. I always thought the TBT tank would be a pain, but it's not that bad at all. I figured it would be more of a hassle to fill, but it's not any harder than a TBH. I also thought it would be alot harder seeding out corners with a TBT, but again, it's not bad at all. The only downside I see to a TBT is that visilibity is less. The downside of a TBH tank is that on hilly ground, it can wander downhill and pull the tillage unit with it. Overall, I think I prefer the TBH, even though there is nothing wrong with our TBT |
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Near-north Ontario, French River | Have any of you guys noticed any difference in the hp required to pull one vs the other? Talked to a fellow near here once, they started out with a tow between but switched to a tow behind after demoing one. The stated that the tow behind required less power to pull. Anyone else noticed any similar? |
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Shelby, MT | I don't want to be the odd ball but it really does depend on your area..when air drills first came to our area most were TBH and everybody was afraid of crusting in the tracks It really is a problem here, not 100% of the time but probably, I am guessing 2 out of 5 yrs you will see the TBH have some crusting(those other 3 the ground is so dry everything is dusted in)...there are enough things to worry about when seeding, so here it is predom TBT. Our ground is very clay, gumbo and can set up like cement. The TBT even causes problems..with 230 bushels or the even bigger tanks full the cart really leaves compaction problems and the come up as ribbons. it even makes the Cat's look bad if you don't know the cause. Go 50 miles south and they can't compact the ground enough so most are TBH. |
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Agent Orange: Friendly fire that keeps on burning. | I agree. If you are in an area where one or the other predominates, then there is usually a good reason for it. In my ground, if you use a TBT, you won't get the seed to come up in the cart tracks - ever, Once the ground is packed, nothing you can do will loosen it so a seed will germinate and grow. If you plant it in uncompacted soil, you can then pack it as hard as you want, and it grows just as good as if it only has a little packing. Go 20 miles north of me and it is just the opposite. They can pack the ground and come behind with a sweep to tear it up and it leaves a perfect seed-bed. If they seed with a TBH, the only thing that grows in the cart tracks is pigeon grass. The ground crusts so bad in the cart track that wheat never makes it through. Yet another case where a guy shouldn't make blanket recommendations or condemnations of a farming practice. As far as power requirements; guys that farm in hilly stuff say that a TBT pulls easier than a TBH. I can't say as I've got more tractor than needed and no hilly stuff. |
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Carter Montana | We've found the same as you and we've stuck with the TBT. We used to run a Big Bud and went to a STX and I think that's going to help alot. 10,000 Lbs less weight.... |
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Shelby, MT | Those Big Buds sure have gotten in good demand the past few years, I look at them in the Traders Dispact and they all are asking good money for them. How many hrs did you have on yours, did you sell it or still have it...I assume you have diamond tread on the air cart like us...seems like maybe they cause the compaction worse than the rice tires..but the ribbons are from the cart not the tractor...the neighbor with two cat 85s have ribbons too and the cat doesn't usually leave ribbons.. |
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SW Saskatchewan | We have one of each. You pays your money and takes your chances.
We have found that a lot of weight is transferred to the tractor on the tbt , sometimes good , sometimes not.
If you are going to pull sweeps and have a real load, best lift and seed back and forth with a tbt, the cart axles won't take the side draft on a turn for round and round seeding.
The tbh will pull marginally harder, extra wheels and on worked ground. The bigger the Tank, the more difference. If you are going to a big bourgault tank, consider the tow between. Also, our land is just a bit hillier than where Ed B farms and the side draft make for quite a few wedge shaped skips on side hills if you don't apply the proper "windage".
If you have big tanks, you will get tired of those skimpy liitle drill fills that you use behind a box truck. Buy a 10" auger from Sakundiak, a 35 hp motor with mover and put it under a semi. With a tbh, you will get tired backing the tank under the auger. With a tbt , you can drive under, fill and slip away with no problem.
As for compaction, I hope you do the sunday crop inspection tour of your neighbours crops and can learn from their experience.
And if you no till, that blind spot behind a tbt can lead to some interesting vocabulary!
Have a good one. |
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NE SD | Always have had tow betweens on our farm since the early '90s. Cost was one of the main reasons....also until recently with the setups that allow 4 tires on the front we never felt there would be enough rubber under the cart with a TBH. Colorblind pretty much summed it up with his statement. Blind spot would be easily eliminated with a camera. Guess if you're in hilly country those TBH must have several disadvantages.....on top of that you're not supposed to transport them loaded. One ended up upside down in a ditch not far from me a month or so ago. |
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ND | I've never really noticed any difference in the power needed to pull. When I did some work for a guy a few years ago I was pulling a 33 foot concord with a TBH tank, using a Cat 65. I know the engine was rated around 280 HP. Our drill is the exact same 33 foot unit, except it has a TBT tank and we pull it with a Steiger that is around the same HP, maybe alittle more. I don't think either drill took any more horsepower than the other, but I guess to be completely fair one should use the same tractor.
One other thing I thought of after I made my last post was that a TBT tank allows the tractor to carry alot of the weight of the cart. Some people might not like it because it seems like it puts alot of tongue weight on the draw bar. The up side of it is that the weight helps give the tractor quite a bit extra traction if you are lacking. |
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Southeast Washington | In our area there aren't very many but they are tow betweens. Because of the hilly terrain we need the weight transfer on the hitch and not dragging dead weight behind. Also on downhill turns on a 45% slope we need to keep the seed tool in the ground so that a big jackknife doesn't happen. There used to be one small tow behind around but it was upside down too many times for the owner so he finally got rid of it.
The hills are what are keeping them from being very popular but we took the plunge and have had a steep learning curve in how to operate it but it has provided great results.
 (Seeding Hawks 10-11-06.JPG)
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 Seeding Hawks 10-11-06.JPG (124KB - 634 downloads)
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Central ND | Have you got a picture of your combine on that steep sidehill also?Wow that is steep!!! Around here we woud use that ground for pasture. |
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Carter Montana | The Buds were good in their day and still carry a big stick, but, the K Cummins is expensive to fix, relatively inefficient and the tractors don't have the hydraulic capacity to run a variable rate cart. We found with the newer one (1989-third to the last built, 4000 Hrs.) parts are getting hard to find as well as the folks that know them. We traded two off on the STX. It was just time to move on last spring. It was a sad day for us.
Diamond tread here also with the 240 Bu cart. The triples on the STX seemed to work well this year. |
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NW Washington | What kind of an airseeder are you pulling? Is that a Concord with a liquid tank? What kind of openers are you using? You don't see very many air hoe drills in the Palouse. Where in SE WA are you located, Colfax, Pomeroy?
BTW with regard to the original question, a tow between tank is always recommended for hilly ground as are the dual tires on the air tank. |
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Galahad, Alberta | We run a 2320 Flexi-coil cart behind a 39' 5000 air drill. My area is completely tow behind. Ease of filling, especially with a semi. No blind spot behind the cart. And no compaction problems unless you are seeding into muddy clay, in which case you shouldn't be going anyway in our soil. We no-till, so sometimes it's tough to see just how wet that low spot is. If you ever get stuck with a loaded tow between cart, and have to unhook, you'll curse the day it came on the farm. When I get the drill stuck, just pull the pin, drive the tractor away, back in on dryer ground, tie on with a heavy chain, yank it out, hook up, and seed around the mess. Usually takes 20 minutes. But if you have a tow between and have to unhook, it's going to take a great big sky hook to ever get that full cart hitched up again. There is a large farm near me that run Cat tractors and they claim that the tow between carts work better for them because you have to make a bigger loop at the end of a pass to turn the rig around, thus the tracks make less ridges because they aren't turning so tight.
FWIW, we had to change all our V-steel packers in the center section or the air drill this spring. The drill had done 11 seasons and we had been doing a lot of welding on split packers. We determined that the reason the center section wore out and were splitting, but not the wings, was because when we crested a hill top, there was 370 HP pulling down on the hitch one direction, gravity pulling the cart back the other way, and any time the packers had to go up and over a rock on the hill top, they would have to bear the two opposing forces. Probably not a huge issue for most farmers, but just something that happened to us.
I know of another farm that decided to trade in their air drill with a tow behind tank because of side draft on hill sides. They had rubber capped packers and they were peeling them off the rims on severe side hills. I'm sure that the tow behind tank contributed to the side draft. |
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Southeast Washington | For School of Hard Knock:
I may have a picture on the camera but not on the computer of harvest. I don't take very many. We run level land R 72's on the hills also. If you look in the background you can see we also pasture the steep stuff.
For John W:
We have a Case IH outfit although the seed tool still has Concord stickers on it. The drill currently has Anderson openers on it but will be looking at others when time to replace. Any suggestions? I am located in Dayton towards the Blue Mountains.
Hopefully I can attach a picture of the one we used in Spring of 2004 that got us to even thinking about shanks and air drills and if it would work on the hills. The John Deere had 4 big coulter disks on it to hold it on the hill to keep it from drafting down the hill. The picture doesn't show how steep it is other than at the top of the picture on the horizon is where the flat ground is. The grass eyebrow is very steep.
Our Case IH drill has opening coulters on each seed opener and they help keep the drill in line on the steep hills. The Challenger has the hydraulic swinging drawbar on it to make uphill turns possible even under load.
For the thread, our area would need a tow between cart but if it was flat country I would look at a tow behind just to be able to see the seed tool easier. I haven't got a camera yet.
 (Deere air drill and tractor 4-2-04 sm.JPG)
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Deere air drill and tractor 4-2-04 sm.JPG (68KB - 622 downloads)
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NW Washington | That John Deere air seeder looks like Steve Maders. I think he has the drill rigged so he can lock the front drill wheels in the straight ahead position for better hillside tracking. You can see a video of Maders outfit on the www.exactrix site. |
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| @JohnW:
John,could you sent the link for that video or the topic where i can find it.Thanks a lot in advance.Take care and have a nice day,wwith the best regards,
Hans-Georg Schwarz |
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Southeast Washington | The one in the picture was Tumac Machinery's tractor and drill and is set up like Maders. They had rented it the fall before. The air cart in my picture doesn't have the dual wheels nor the exactrix system like Maders does. Kevin Mader came down for a couple of days getting me running on it so about everything I know about air drills comes from Kevin. They do have the pin lockers on the wheels on the front to keep the drill straight on their drill but Kevin did like the big coulters on the drill in the picture and I don't know if they ever put them on their drill. This year they showed up with a Yielder at Winston's house and fertilized and then seeded with the John Deere CCS drill in the other fields. |
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air seeder cart position ? Front of behind?
